We went into the business of soap-making pretty deep. Meanwhile, I read some more labels and added pinches of this and that detergent and a few squirts of liquid "wonder-cleaners" that didn't say what was in them. In her crisp Scotch way, Lottie got across to me that she thought I was wasting soap powder and my time and cluttering up the sink while she was busy there, so I wound up with half a cup of Doozey soap flakes, filled the pan to the brim and set the concoction at the back of the drain board to do its business. * * * * * When dinner was over, I was in the living room reading the paper when I heard Lottie muttering at the sink. Lottie doesn't usually mutter, so I went out to see what was wrong. "Nice mess," she said and pointed at the roaster. The stuff had cooled and jelled into a half-solid condition. "Hah!" I said. "We had a supersaturated solution. When it cooled off, it coagulated." Lottie scowled. It makes her nervous when I use big words which I only do when I'm talking about chemistry and the like. "Well, uncoogalate it and dump it out of my roaster," she told me. My scientific inquiring mind was stirred as I lifted the pan over to the table under the center light. We had here a gelatin of various cleaners, and every one of them claiming to be best ever. What would this new combination do? I grabbed a pan off the stove that had a mess of scorched carrot leavings in the bottom. Lottie had been soaking it with about a half inch of water. As I reached for a tablespoon, Lottie objected. "Look, now, if you are going to start another _experiment_, dump that mess out first and let me work on the roaster." I saved about a cupful of the slimy gunk and she went back to her dishes. "You'll be sorry," I said under my breath, "if this turns out to be the only batch of the finest cleaner in the whole world. And us with only a cupful." A minute later, I was glad she hadn't heard me. When I dropped a little glob of the stuff into the carrot pan and stirred it around a bit, instead of dissolving and diluting in the extra water, the mixture seemed to stay the same density after swallowing up the water. "Give me a pie tin," I demanded. Lottie sighed, but she got a shallow pan out of the pantry and handed it to me. Then I poured the jelly out of the carrot pan and I made my first important discovery. The stuff was not good for cleaning out scorched carrots. The pot was bone-dry. So were the carrots. They had a desiccated look and were stuck worse than ever to the bottom. I brushed them with my finger and the top layers powdered to dust. Then I noticed that not a droplet or smidgin of the jelly remained in the pot. When I had poured it out, it had gone out all at the same time, as if it was trying to hang together. The carbonized carrots at the very bottom were hard and dry, too. A scrape job if I ever saw one. * * * * *